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Revenue-Neutral Carbon Chimera May Work

The revenue-neutral feature of the plan requires a dividend to households, not a tax swap that can be manipulated.

March 5, 2017 1:02 p.m. ET

Regarding your editorial “The Carbon Tax Chimera” (Feb. 25): Revenue neutrality is key to the plan, and the notion that government would grow is completely unfounded since the money collected on carbon emissions would be entirely returned to U.S. households as a dividend. Those who use no more than the average amount of energy from fossil fuels would notice either no change or a favorable one. It’s true that lower-income households spend a larger fraction of their income on energy, but they don't spend a larger dollar value. Since they use less energy than average, they would receive more via the dividend than they...